More than 1.1 million fans join the global Zerg invasion

More than 1.1 million eSports fans tuned in to the launch broadcast for StarCraft II’s Heart of the Swarm. The launch showcased a massive 21-hour broadcast of launch events and at the end of the first two days after launch the game had sold around a million copies worldwide. Events included a Heart of the Swarm tournament at the Major League Gaming Winter Championship in Texas and we definitely agree with Blizzard CEO and co-founder Mike Morhaime who says in a press release “In addition to a brand-new single-player campaign, we added a ton of enhancements with this expansion to make StarCraft II even more fun to play, and more exciting to watch”. Although StarCraft has always been a popular game on Twitch, since the launch of the new expansion they’ve noted an uptake in viewers and also gamers streaming on Twitch, they reported a peak concurrent viewership of more than 157,000 viewers – not bad.

September 9, 2012

Where is the Mists of Pandaria in-game launch event?

Although Blizzard have announced that there is going to be several official global launch events for the release of MoP in the US, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Spain, Sweden, the UK, Brazil, Mexico, Chile, and Taiwan; there has not as yet been any news of an in-game launch event. But, the lack of any news doesn’t mean that there isn’t a plan in the pipeline, especially since Blizzard created in-game launch events for both the Wrath of the Lich King and Cataclysm releases.

In 2008 Wrath of the Lich King featured a full on zombie invasion where infected crates appeared in-game and began to infect the players themselves, the players could then choose to cure themselves by visiting one of the Argent Dawn within 10 minutes who had also appeared throughout the world. If you were not cured (either because you ran out of time or chose not to be) you then became a zombie who was treated as an enemy by all other players and NPCs except other zombies, and you had the ability to then infect other players.

And again in 2010 for the Cataclysm release, if you were allied to the horde you were called to take back the Echo Isles from a tribe of trolls called the Darkspears, led by their leader Vol’jin, after being ousted by the witch doctor Zalazane. If you were alliance you received a similar call to join the fight to take back Gnomeregan led by High Tinker Mekkatorque, following the betrayal by his chief advisor Thermaplugg.

Further details of the launch events can be found on the Blizzard website, members of the dev team will be at these events where possible so you can meet them and get your copy of the game signed. You will also be able to purchase both standard and collectors editions. In the meantime I’ll be looking out for signs of any in-game launch events, please do let us know if you’ve heard of anything, it seems like a lot of players are asking the question.